TapThatDraft FAQ: Why Does Player "VAL" Change, or Why do Positional Ranks Seem Out of Order?

If you’re asking about the differences in displayed “VAL”, then here’s a quick explainer article.

I’ll also cover why the Position column “ranks” can appear out of order in TapThatDraft and Hold-My-BeerSheets.

This only applies to Snake drafts (not Auction).

Two types of “VAL”: for Live Sheets and for Static sheets

TapThatDraft uses 2 different variants of VAL calculation, to suit the circumstance.

1. For the Print-outs and for the normal non-subscriber webpage view, VAL is calculated by a single pre-draft forecasting of positional tradeoffs against the selected ADP Reference. This feature is described more in this linked article. These VALs are used for generating a so-called “Static sheet”, designed to improve your timing of picks by forecasting what your opponents will do.

2. For subscribers on the webpage, or people using Auto-mock, the last point doesn’t apply: You’re not using “static” sheets anymore (to approximate the entire future draft sequence), you’re using the Responsive features (which look ahead over only the next round or so, when it’s your pick). In this case, the VALs will be plain “Value-over-Replacement” calculations (similar to the Auction sheet), as long as it’s not your turn.

The the order of players will change when switching to a state when it’s “Your Turn”. One reason is that the list will more closely represent the “Draft room order” that your opponents see.

As a reminder, the vertical ordering of players (except when “Live but NOT your turn”) should more closely represent the order of the Draft Room you chose— meaning the “ADP Reference” that you selected to represent your Opponent’s sheet. This is why players shuffle up and down, and this is described in a dedicated article [linked here].

Explanations for Anomalous Player Orderings

Sometimes, players might seem surprisingly out of Rank Order— or far out of the expected vertical Time-Priority ordering.

Here are a couple reasons that have emerged:

1. Firstly, if you are using the Live/Responsive tool under subscription, then player ordering is intended to change significantly when it becomes your turn [article linked here]. The order will (first of all) more closely resemble the Draft room you selected— And on top of this, a number of other factors will re-order them in terms of “Time Priority”.

2. If you are in a Superflex league but have chosen a NON-superflex Reference list. The QBs can fall far out of order.

3. If you are in any other league with exotic settings, and you used any Reference list besides “Own Rankings”.

4. If you have used “Edit Rankings” to create your custom “MyRankings” positional ordering… You will sometimes see players “out of order” because your league setting is not 0.5 PPR. As described in the article about Edit Rankings, your custom positional rankings are calibrated to 0.5 PPR only. So if a player has a higher “Receptions-to-Yards” ratio, then he might appear more valuable in 1.0 PPR and therefore receive a better ranking when you generate 1.0 PPR lists.

5. Finally, there is a temporary bug we are fixing now, that applies only to “Own Rankings” as an ADP Reference. This will be fixed shortly.

Hopefully this article helps anyone who has been confused by observing the tool’s behavior.

Good luck out there!

/Subvertadown